A peculiar hobby

"My Hobby" is probably the most common essay title we had when we were young during the primary school. I am not sure whether it is true for other people around the world, but it is certainly true in Malaysia, where I grew up. And normally we would write about some very ordinary hobbies like fishing, collecting stamps, gardening, football, basketball, etc.. There is nothing wrong about these examples of hobby but they are just so commonly known to be a hobby. If a hobby is defined as some  regular activity you do for pleasure during leisure, then the following can be considered a hobby too. 

One of my hobbies is peeling orange or mandarin or clementine or anything resemble. What I am saying here is not just a simple peeling action. I like to peel the orange until it is totally clean of the white stuff which is called pith, which I just found out its name. It is not like I hate pith. I can totally eat them all together with the flesh and I know the pith contains a lot of fibers and good for health. But whenever I got time and whenever I got some oranges, I would peel them and try to get rid of the pith as much as possible.

The fun is not peeling the skin, it is rather easy to remove. Remove the pith is the major challenge. Again, I don't hate pith eventhough it has a slight bitter taste. But I cannot resist to peel them. No tools, no knife, just fingers. Of course with fingernails, peeling pith can be easier. Without, I would use my fingertip to gently rub off the pith. But the tricky part about using fingernails is to not destroy the very fragile membrane that keeps the juicy flesh inside. Once broken, the juice would burst out, then it is harder to remove the pith. The ultimate quest is an intact orange without a single bit of pith. 

Among so many citrus fruits, pith can be removed the easiest is clementine. The level of difficulty of peeling pith is also depends on the age the fruit. A fresh orange is generally harder to remove its pith because it is so juicy that the membrane is so easily broken and it is frustrating when it is broken. The pith of an old one can be removed without much effort but normally it tastes pretty bad. So everytime, I kinda have to make a compromise between the peeling difficulty and the taste. 

If you still cannot understand why I go through so much trouble to eat an orange, let me give you some analogies. Peeling pith is just like removing price tag stickers or like removing the plastic membrane on the screen of your new smartphone. It feels great when the price tag sticker comes off in a single piece. The sensation here is the same. When the pith comes off in a big chunk, it probably triggers off some endorphin and gives me a few seconds of satisfaction. For these few seconds, nothing more is needed. For these few seconds, it is bliss, a glimpse of heaven. 

I am sure that everybody has at least one or two uncommon hobbies of this kind. Like in the movie Amélie Poulain, it has this genius idea to introduce the characters by going a list of little things the characters like to do and dislike to do. If you watch like even the first 10 mins of Amélie Poulain, you will already notice a few little hobbies you have in common with the characters in the movie. For example playing with paper glue, popping bubble wrap, cracking knuckles, etc.. Like the following extract, Amélie loves dipping her hand into a sack of beans, cracking the caramel of crême brulée, and stone skipping.